If we weren’t certain that the sun will rise and set again tomorrow, we would probably spend our days in radically different ways. Likewise, if we didn’t believe that investments will pay off, economic growth would grind to a halt, just as a lack of collective conviction in political systems spell instability. For her photo installation The Reassuring Hand Gestures of Big Men, Small Men, All Men (2021), Bani Abidi scoured news reports from across historical eras and geographies, and zoomed in on the body language that political leaders use in drumming up camaraderie and confidence to preserve the status quo. Her close-up images, tightly framing the hands of these authority figures, are arranged in a loose, horizontal line by category.

Starting from the left of the installation at Abidi’s 2021 solo exhibition “The Man Who Talked Until He Disappeared,” presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, one sees a cluster of clenched fists thrust in the air, and then a series of open palms, held upright. The next section, of single digits pointing skyward, abuts on the right with clippings of salutes, and fingers spread in V-shapes. By typologically grouping the photos, Abidi underscores how, from democrat Barack Obama to right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu (both frequently seen with balled-up hands), communist revolutionary Mao Zedong to nationalist Mobutu Sese Seko (both wavers), these men employ the same non-verbal rhetoric to convey their ideologies, prompting questions of just how different they are. In their aggregation and hyper-visibility, the gestures become not signifiers of specific meaning but hollow symbols with values to be arbitrated. Power lies in symbolic exchanges between governors and their supporters; a salute for a salute back. In The Reassuring Hand Gestures of Big Men, Small Men, All Men, the irony stems from the fact that there is no visible reciprocal.

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